There has been a proliferation of wireless applications and application services. In the state of the art, applications are available to users who pay for a connection service and are billed by an access network carrier for application access usage. There are application services for which it is beneficial to allow the application service provider (e.g. application developer, web site host, cloud service host, email host, on-line shopping host, ad service host, location service or driving directions service host, M2M service such as vending machine/home power meter/automobile connect/etc., etc.) to pay the carrier for some or all of the access services necessary to operate the application service. There are also application services for which it is beneficial to allow the application service provider to specify an access service policy and in some embodiments, to also be billed differently for the application access services depending on the access service policies selected by the application services provider.
For large application service provider partners, a carrier may be willing to invest the human resources necessary to negotiate an access service business deal and create and publish the access services required to enable application services providers to specify, pay for and/or control policy for application services. When there are many smaller application service provider partners, it is often impractical for the carrier to manually conduct the business processes required to create the access service policies and/or service plans to enable application services providers to pay for and/or control policy for application services. In such cases, an automated Application Services Provider Interface System is valuable to enable many application service providers, and/or device manufacturers, M2M providers, etc. to specify, pay for and/or control policy for application services.
The foregoing example of desirable areas of research and development that are lacking in the state of the art are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive.